Biden Should Resign the Presidency to Save His Legacy

George Washington could tell a lie, Taft didn’t get stuck in the bath, and Mary Lincoln never used Todd, her maiden name, after marriage. As a presidential historian, I love eviscerating falsehoods with an arsenal of contradictory evidence. I start by naming the false witness, identifying his motivations, methodically trace the lie’s evolution through secondary sources and, finally, arguing a moral imperative to intervene.

I always win the battle, but I’ll never win the war. I’m at least a century late for that.

I’m not sold on “history is written by the victors,” but I’m certain that presidential history is determined by first-responders like first president’s biographer Parson Weems, who invented the Cherry Tree Story in order to cast Washington — and by extension, the infant nation — as fundamentally good. Today, that likely includes the many journalists who are covering Biden’s presidency, like Axios’ Alex Thompson, who left Hunter Biden’s trial shocked by what he’d learned about Biden’s decision to run for president given that several of his children were struggling with various addictions. These highly subjective contemporaries experience the president they chronicle and, whether they realize it or not, carry the attendant baggage of the era. I’ve seen this happen over and over again to the dead, my specialty, but it’s breathtaking to watch it develop in real-time.

“I think the entire narrative on Joe Biden is gonna change,” MSNBC’s Chuck Todd said on his podcast last week. “Everything’s always been about his ambition and his ambition comes first.” And less believable comparisons are becoming ossified as well; according to the Washington Times, First Lady Jill Biden is “inviting comparisons to first lady Edith Wilson.” Since the debate, the media has seemingly shifted its focused off Trump, who they tacitly disapprove of, and monomaniacally painted a portrait of Biden as a power hungry, angry old man who, despite the electorate’s concern and dissent within the party, is shuffling towards November — when his loss will unleash a fresh hell. He’s going down, they tell us, and he’s taking the American Experiment with him. 

This is a stark departure from what I assumed Biden’s biography would be dominated by — he emerged from retirement to defeat Donald J. Trump, jumpstarted the Covid-19 vaccine rollout, and gave FDR a run for most progressive — but all may not be lost.

Endings, the late scientist Daniel Kahneman told us, create an overwhelming cognitive illusion. If the last two days of a great vacation were terrible, we’ll likely remember the whole trip as a bust. If the next six months in office are, as it seems, Biden’s final act, his exit strategy should take inspiration from George Washington. He was called the greatest man who ever lived by contemporaries — including King George III — for voluntarily giving up power twice. And that’s what, in a time of monarchs and despots, overwhelmed the reality on the ground: He rightly suspected most of the bold-faced founders like Thomas Jefferson wrote anonymous essays criticizing him, and he died estranged from them. I think Biden’s exit can bring him immortal glory, too, but he’ll have to go big — and then immediately go home.

At this point, Biden’s increasingly likely announcement that he won’t run for reelection less than a month before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago isn’t enough to save his legacy. He’ll still be blamed for hindering the new candidate’s ability to compete with Trump, arguably the most famous man in America. And there’s nothing magnanimous about the delayed announcement, either. He’s acquiescing to pressure from the media, the electorate, and his party. But the key to overtaking that narrative is close at hand — and a heartbeat away from the presidency. 

Sounds unfair? King George III, who is misremembered for losing America, would agree. The founders loved the king until he ignored their pleas, so in our collective memory, he’s to blame. Still. No one seems to care that he was, by deferring to Parliament, following the British constitution. And no one will care, if Biden’s replacement loses, that he stepped aside. He may be damned to the bottom half of the C-SPAN rankings for eternity, dismissed as the president who lost America.

There’s only one move left: Biden must resign. By doing so, his name would always appear alongside that of the woman president’s ascension to the highest office. Gerald Ford predicted America’s first woman President would ascend from the Vice Presidency, and though it’s not ideal, given the present circumstances, it feels necessary. It’s hard to imagine, with no rising star in the party, the Democrats bypassing Kamala Harris as their nominee. And strategically, it’s the only way to guarantee the country becomes better acquainted with her through inevitable media focus on the historic nature of her candidacy. She can easily be cast as the comparatively youthful, optimistic foil to Trump, a doom-and-gloom senior citizen. 

But they can go even farther. Biden can save face by claiming it was the attempted assassination of Donald J. Trump that pushed him toward this decision. Just as Ronald Reagan was transformed by his own assassination attempt (he wrote an op-ed calling for greater gun control in the New York Times and pushed the Brady bill), he’s been working toward bold legislation. Last fall, he created the first ever first-ever Office of Gun Violence Prevention — and put Vice President Harris in charge.

President Harris can reinforce this, and demonstrate her bipartisan approach to governing, by immediately calling for Congress to introduce the “Donald J. Trump Gun Violence Prevention Act.” She hopes, of course, that Republicans will support in light of the attempted assassination of the de facto leader of their party, but if not, that’s fine. Her administration, like her predecessor’s, puts country over party.

And just like that, Biden’s age becomes a chapter in the book of his life that ends on an unprecedented note: He not only stepped aside, but stepped down — and that will always be the story of the first woman president. Of course, Biden has always been an unparalleled, selfless ally: He served as Vice President and loyal friend to Barack Obama, the first Black president. In 2026, when America celebrates its 250th anniversary, he’ll be the only white male president of 45 who can make that claim. 

Alexis Coe is an American presidential historian, senior fellow at New America, and the author of, most recently, the New York Times best-selling You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington.